Now this is interesting.

Major papers across the U.S. probably got a swarm of letters from around the world about the election of Pope Benedict XVI. How to choose between them? This one from Paul Kokoski in Hamilton, Ontario looks like a good one to run…

So said the LA Dog Trainer…
So said the Washington Post…
So said the New York Times…
And Canada’s National Post…
And so said the Miami Herald!

The American Spectator’s Wlady Pleszczynski catches them all running Mr. Kokoski’s letter, and notes the Post tweaking his grammar a bit.

A quick Google search on Mr. Kokoski’s name shows he had a similar success placing a letter around the world after the last Pope’s death. A search on the phrase “will one day be proclaimed a saint by the Catholic Church” shows his letter appearing in the Irish Times, the Tobago News, the Chicago Sun-Times, Al-Ahram Weekly, the Taipei Times, the Korea Times…and that’s just the first page.

What’s up with that?

Michelle Malkin recently stung papers for running “astroturfed” letters ginned up by activists at Moveon.org. This isn’t really astroturfing, it’s…I don’t know, rototilling or mulching or something.

Dr. Rusty Shackleford continues his important interview with the ex-wife of American hostage Roy Hallums.

This should really be taking place on Sixty Minutes, of course, and not on some pseudonymous blog named after a Star Wars character. But bless Rusty for not letting us forget about Roy.

Not literally, no. But there’s a blurb in the World Tribune’s pay-per-view section, Geostrategy-Direct.com, that describes how they have killed or captured all but two of their list of 26 most wanted terrorists since the list was released in December of 2003. And those were just the bigwigs–there are a lot more dead bodies out there. (You need to be a paid subscriber to read it.)

One of them was wanted as a mastermind for the Madrid bombing:

At first, Al Qaida network leader Saleh Al Awfi was not identified as either having been slain or captured. But Saudi security sources said Interior Ministry forces killed Abdul Karim Al Majati, a Moroccan national and regarded as the mastermind behind the multiple suicide bombings in Casablanca in 2003.

Sources said Al Majati had been sought by several European governments in connection with the Madrid train bombings in March 2004.

Either fourteen or eighteen insurgents were killed along with them in an April 5th siege.

I have both eyes open about the Saudi role in the war on terror. I have no illusions about their complicated relationship with terrorist groups, about their lackadaisical efforts to disrupt terrorist funding, and about their ongoing support and exporting of radical, fundamentalist Islam. But when they do the right thing they also need to know we’re watching. It looks like their police have been doing some very good work in getting rid of some very dangerous men.

The Big P has asked that I stop in to water the plants while he does something or other somewhere over the upcoming weekend. So you can look forward to some more hard-hitting, incisive geopolitical analysis like this. Belmont Club, watch out!

I’ll begin by kicking the liberal media. Courageous choice on a conservative blog, I know, thank you, especially when the medium in question is NPR. Caught their take on the elevation of Benedict XVI in the car this AM. I have a pretty good stereo and I could pick out the grinding of the little gears in their heads as they fought furiously to remain professional and unbiased and not just burst out with a hearty OH COME ON YOU GOD-BOTHERING FASCISTS WHY DON’T YOU AND YOUR NEW OBERSTURMPOPENFUHRER JUST PLASTER UP MY CERVIX WITH BONDO RIGHT NOW AND CONSIGN ALL THE GAYS TO SLAVE LABOR IN YOUR SILLY SUPERSTITION FACTORY! And they did a pretty good job of holding it in. Except.

Neal Conan summed up Joseph Ratzinger as–and this is transcribed from my own spotty memory here–as very well educated, a professor, yet also very conservative.

Yet also. A man of contradictions, this Ratzinger. Smart enough to know better than this. What’s his problem?

But then his correspondent in Rome–whom I believe was Emily Harris–described Ratzinger as very soft spoken, and very mild mannered, but also a stickler for the rules.

But also.

That rankles more, I think–on a level outside of politics. Someone who pays careful attention to the rules presumptively does so because of a sadistic streak–and for that reason a contrast is drawn with his soft-spokenness. This man cares about these God-given rules, and yet surprisingly is not a martinet about it. It is surprising, that is, if you believe that hoary stereotype that bitterness and not love motivates the traditionally religious.

It reminds me a little bit of the John Bolton confirmation hearings going on right now. Of course the man must have a temper, he must be brutal and thuggish, even though eyewitness Thomas Fingar said the “soft-spoken” Bolton merely “stood up” and “put his hands on his hips” when chewing out a subordinate. The left’s script script calls for the conservative nominee to be a martinet and a thug. But in both cases they find themselves struggling through their lines with a badly miscast villain.

These are relatively small (though telling) slips, and the live, ad-libbed exchange seems to have been edited out of the archived versions of the election coverage at NPR’s site. I don’t blame them for cutting it out, since it had no place in a taxpayer-funded broadcast in the first place.